


The Fine Line Between Greatness and Madness

by Nonia



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 08:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonia/pseuds/Nonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dis' thought on the the the saying regarding the line of Durin that whenever one was born, the gods flipped a coin, one side for greatness the other side for madness.</p><p>Thorin's coin is still spinning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fine Line Between Greatness and Madness

**Author's Note:**

> Response to the Hobbit kink-meme prompt:  
> There is a saying about the Durin line that when ever one was born the gods flipped a coin, one side for greatness the other side for madness. Dis is pregnant with Fili, and has seen her father's father overcome with gold-madness, her father made mad with grief. And all she can do is pry for the child in her womb.
> 
> And as for Thorin? If the gods flipped a coin at his birth it is still spinning.

Many stories surround the Dwarves. Some true, some not; some exaggerated. For theirs is a hidden race, a hardy race, and a secretive race. 

Men said the Dwarves were hewn from the stone. 

Elves said the Dwarves could not survive if not in the stone. 

And the Dwarves themselves said, that whenever one of the line of Durin was born, the gods flipped a coin. 

One side for greatness. 

One for madness. 

*****

Dis' earliest memories of her older brother Thorin, then a prince in their Grandfather's great halls, was of him spinning a gold coin between his fingers and over his knuckles. 

She remembered thinking it magic and imploring her brother to do it again, and again, and again, until either he tired or his duties called him away. 

When Frerin had been born, Dis would convince Frerin to make Thorin show them the coin trick, for she deemed herself too old to beg to see it. 

It had been around this time that whispers of the Mighty King Thror's gold-lust had started to take flight. Dis remembered her brother's countenance darkening, he would come home late at night and he would brood and stare into the fire and roll that coin and do nothing else. 

Dis and Frerin both then stopped asking to see the trick. They saw it enough while Thorin stared into the fire. And then Thorin stopped coming back home altogether, having moved himself into their Grandfather's chambers. 

*****

The King's chambers, once a place of joy in Dis' mind, were now dark and oppressive. Full of piles and piles of gold, for the vaults were now overflowing. She remembered once visiting her Grandfather's chambers with Thorin's pipe in hand, for he had forgot it by the hearth when he graced them with his presence the night before. 

Rounding a pile of coins, she could see Thorin knelt by their Grandfather who would place his hand in the coins, and let them fall from between his fingers again and again. Thorin's voice, low and pleading, "Thror, my lord, let us go out to the balcony… let us away from this room…Grandftather, I beg of you…" and while her grandfather ignored her brother, Thorin's hand which was not on Thror's shoulder was spinning the coin over his knuckles, over and over. 

She had left without giving her brother the pipe and spoke not a word to anyone of what she had seen. 

And then the dragon came, and with it came the running, and the despair and the loss. Dis had been one of the volunteers to roam the camps and collect names of those who had survived and those who had been lost. Her family, Thror, Thrain, Thorin, and now Frerin too, left free to plan their next move. 

It had upset her greatly to hear Thror would think of nothing but Erebor and to reclaim the gold lost there. Thrain, Thorin and Frerin having to guide his thoughts to tending their people first.

It had been then, that Dis had heard the first whispers of grief-stricken Dwarves muttering that perchance the coin the gods had flipped for Thror had greatness and madness stamped on the same side. 

Upset, and unsettled, Dis had returned to her family, the arguments and debating having abated. It seemed they all had tried for that night. Only Thorin sat alone by the fire, staring, haunted into its depths and Dis was sure like herself and so many others, Thorin only saw the great wyrm's fire in his mind. 

She stared at her brother, she could have sworn he had been one of the statues that used to adorn Erebor's halls, for he was very still, if not for the movement of his hand, and that damnable coin, spinning and spinning over his knuckles. 

For the first time in her life, Dis felt a chill run up her back instead of a thrill at the sight, and silently, she rested next to her brother, placed her head on his shoulder and stilled his hand with hers, making him still his hand in order to grip hers. 

*****

Azanulbizar was a time Dis would scour from her soul if she could. For unlike Erebor, where she had helped and run with their people, she had been forced to wait for news; for ravens bearing red ribbons for news of injuries, blue ribbons for news of the war, white ribbons for news of the dead. 

She received two red ribbons, for her eldest brother and father; two white, for her brother and grandfather. 

Dis was brave for their people. For she was of the line of Durin, and their family was not the only one to lose their loved ones. She found herself replacing her gold clasps with silver ones, and trading her gold for goods as they marched to meet the warrior halfway towards Ered Luin as her brother's letters instructed; for gold sickened her. It seemed to her like an age afterwards before her brother and what few survived rejoined their camp. 

Dis felt her heart break at hearing her brother addressed as King, and was told of their father's grief and madness. Of how he had been driven into wandering and had been lost into the vastness of the land. How her brother had tried to find him only to be attacked by orcs for his efforts, forced to abandon the search and continue the march.

Dis remembered not much of that day, it seemed Balin who had told her the news had caught her in a faint and taken her to her tent and when Dis awoke that night, she found she could not breathe nor sit up. 

There was a tightness in her chest and a heaviness in her soul. The camp was quiet, and bleak, even the mournful cries had faded, as final news of those that had been lost arrived with the meeting of the two halves of their people. All was quiet, except for the soft clink of metal every once in a while. 

Drawn by the sound, Dis found in herself the strength to leave her bedding and head to the flap of her tent where she saw him. Her brother, sitting with the stiffness of one injured, an oaken branch by his foot, as still as stone again, but for the movement of his hand as he stared into the fire.

Dis did not remember whether she cried when she received the white ribbons. Nor did she remember whether she cried when told of their father's madness. Thrain's coin, too, seemed to have landed on madness. 

But cry she did when she discovered the source of the clinking sound. For in her entire life, not once had she seen the coin fall from her brother's fingers as he spun it, nor his hands shake. 

But now his hands shook. And the coin fell. 

Every time it fell from his shaking hands, it landed into the stone surrounding the fire and he would pick it up heedless of the heat, again and again and again. Clink. Clink. Clink.

*****

Thorin, it seemed, was destined to be King. He led their people, and he built them a home under the Blue Mountains. Many had whispered of the King-in-Exile, and his destiny for greatness, and it made Dis shudder, for the same was said of her grandfather and her father. 

Dis herself, had found her One on that march to the Blue Mountains; one of the warriors of Azanulbizar. With her brother's blessing, she had wed and under the Blue Mountains she built herself a home and saw her brother become a great King and lose himself.

Thorin, her brother, was no more. Here was Thorin II Oakenshield, King-in-Exile, King Under the Mountain that was taken from them. She missed her easy laughter with her brother; she missed their jests and their secrets. She missed the thrill of seeing her brother perform his magic trick with the coin for her. Often times Dis found her brother brooding, staring into space, digging tunnels in his thoughts, still as the statues of Erebor but for the movement of his hand, that damnable coin flowing across his knuckles, the only thing of her brother's keepsakes to survive Erebor and Dis found herself wishing the coin would disappear, but she had not the courage to pry it from her brother's hands. 

It was not long before Dis announced she was with child. It was welcome news, for every babe was cherished, there were so few of them, and one of Durin doubly so, for the blessed line would continue. 

When whispers of the King's heir reached Dis' ears, she would not listen. For this was her child first, and a child of Durin's line second. She dared not dig too deep into the caverns of her mind, for she knew what she feared. She feared for this child and the madness of the line of Durin, for it seemed as if the coins of the gods were not in their favour. 

Her brother greeted the news with much joy, and his visits to his sister became more frequent as she swelled with child. He seemed determined to have the child grow with the legacy of Erebor, and Dis had not the heart to stand in her brother's way and indulged him as he planned the babe's rooms much to the chagrin of her One who could not refuse his King's whims. 

Often times, Dis would stand in the doorway of the nursery, as her brother stood in the middle of it, gazing at its walls as he planned what he would do with it, coin spinning in his fingers and Dis would have a moment of irrational fear that she did not wish her child to see that magic trick until she would convince herself that she was foolish and drag herself out of her tunnels and her brother out of his by the offer of food. 

The night Dis had birthed her son had been a difficult one. The rain falling, and the thunder was roaring, and her babe seemed reluctant to join them. It had been long and tiring hours and Dis worried that neither she nor the babe might survive the night, until in the wee hours of the dawn, weak cries were heard and the babe was cleaned and she was moved to her chambers and finally, finally, the babe was given to her. 

Dis held her son for the first time, and her brother, standing by the hearth, congratulated her and vowed to her, "Your son, heir of Durin, will rule in Erebor, sister. This I promise you." 

And Dis, looking at her brother half hidden in the shadows of the fire, with the coin spinning in his hand, again and again and again, looking so much like his grandfather, felt a dread in her heart. 

She did not want to think of Erebor and its cursed gold 

She did not want the chance of the Durins' coin. For there were still two it might claim.

She gazed down at her son and with a start whispered a realisation, "He has hair of gold." 

And she wept, and wept, as her brother's coin spun and spun.

**Author's Note:**

> I took some liberties with the timeline, specially Thrain's timeline, placing his disappearance somewhere between movie-canon and book-canon.


End file.
